How cool is it to receive an email like this! Photos pulled from the album.

From: Michael Burch
Sent: July 8, 2016
To: Sarah Curry
Subject: Yacht Ngaio

Hi,

How delightful to come across your website by accident! I had no idea that the Hydrovane was still being made.

I bought mine in England from Derek Daniels in 1986, and fitted it just to starboard of the boarding ladder on my yacht Ngaio (launched 16 July 1986 — thirty years ago next Saturday).

Ngaio is a Victor 40 which my wife and I built from a bare GRP hull and deck. The idea of a separate rudder and a self-steering gear which did not use the main steering gear was most attractive, and that’s why we chose it. In September 1986 we set off from Falmouth in SW England to sail around the world. We arrived in our native New Zealand in November 1987, ran out of money, got jobs, got a mortgage, built a house – and never left!

The Hydrovane (Horatio – the anglicised version of Horatius, he who kept the bridge in Macaulay’s poem: a lousy pun, but mine own…) steered all but about 100 of the 12,000 miles of that trip. The only fault it developed was that the spinnaker cloth covering the vane rotted out pretty quickly in the tropics, and I had to sew a replacement from ordinary sailcloth. The extra weight did not seem to make any difference.

Once back in NZ, I fitted the remote course-setting pulley and endless loop which I should have had from the start. I intended to convert it to an electric motor, but had not got around to doing so before selling the boat in 1996.

So it’s Hurrah for the Hydrovane! Give it my best wishes, and long may Derek’s brilliantly subtle invention continue to keep the adventurous on course.

Yours,

Mike Burch

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